1860: John R. Baylor, [with Erath vigilantes among his party], were returning this month from an Indian hunt when they came upon seven Natives and began firing. One of the campers was a young boy who could have escaped but he stopped to help an older, wounded man trying to mount his horse. “He tried to lift him up, but the man was unable to stand. When the boy saw he could not help the man, he gave a loud cry of anguish and and started toward the white men, determined to avenge the death of his comrades. The white men began shooting at the Indian boy, with six-shooters and rifles. [the 1857 musket shown could have been the type used] The boy returned their fire with arrows – striking the nearest man in the hand – then a second arrow into his gunstock. The Indian boy was then stopped by a blast from John Baylor’s shotgun. When the body was examined [and scalped] it was found to contain one rifle hole and nine pistol wounds besides the fatal shot which stopped him.”

Betty Elliot Hanna. Doodle Bugs and Cactus Berries: A Historical Sketch of Stephens County. Breckenridge: Nortex Press, 1975.

John Baylor’s statement on scalping: “And here our eastern friends are entitled to an explanation – especially those who get their ideas of the noble red man from Cooper’s novels – as to why we scalp our enemies. The Indians believe that if they can carry off their dead and hide or bury them with a whole scalp, they will go to paradise . . . and we as are not in the missionary business we sent everyone to hell we could by scalping them.”

John L. Waller. “Colonel George Wythe Baylor.” The Southwestern Social Science Quarterly, 24 (June, 1943), 23-35.